Austere August: No Dairy, Sugar, Caffeine or Alcohol!

This year for Austere August I am adhering to a diet with No Dairy, No Added Sugar, No Caffeine, and No Alcohol. I want to see what, if any, difference removing all of these elements, together, from my diet for the same month makes.

So far, added sugar has been the element that requires the most vigilance since food manufacturers use it in many products.

The element that was the most worrisome to eliminate was caffeine. I had been consuming 200 milligrams per day, so I was wondering how I’d do getting that down to zero. I started on a weekend, so I had 200 milligrams on Friday, as usual. Then I dropped to 45 milligrams on Saturday. I definitely noticed the drop. Things got worse on Sunday when I had no caffeine. I was groggy and foggy all day. On Monday, I started to come out of it. By Tuesday, I was fine, and I’ve remained fine ever since.

Dairy and alcohol have been easy for me to eliminate. They are not significant elements in my life so there hasn’t been too much to cut.

A fun aspect of this particular Austere August is that it has prompted me to make interesting discoveries such as Nixie’s sugar-free and caffeine-free sodas (not bad), Best Day Brewing’s alcohol-free Hazy IPA (pretty good), Lily’s cacao chocolate bars that contain no dairy or sugar (okay), Organic Ville sugar-free ketchup (good), and a vegan Reuben at Beyond Bread (not bad)! Also, I have revisited products such as non-dairy cheese (doesn’t melt as well as dairy, and I prefer the taste and texture of dairy, but still, not bad).